Published June 18, 2025
Rams Hill’s Wil Mayo Talks SoCal Golf and the Destination’s Next Chapter
The Fazio track in secluded, desert surrounds has ambitions for more.
Some 24 million people live across Southern California, so it’s no surprise where most of the golfers who play Rams Hill Golf Club come from. Those who make the trek to the desert, to little Borrego Springs at the mouth of the largest state park in California, do it to experience a Tom Fazio design that is by most accounts one of the very best in the state.
But Rams Hill has larger ambitions: The next step is to morph into something closer resembling a contained, resort-style offering, compelling golfers beyond its regional clientele—two hours from San Diego, three from LA, an hour and a half from Palm Springs—to travel to a tiny town of 2,500 people.
“We’re 18 really, really great golf holes in the middle of absolute nowhere,” says Wil Mayo, who became the marketing director at Rams Hill in 2019 after seven years at the Southern California Golf Association. The course has enjoyed a healthy amount of fan fare and rankings love since its opening in 2014, but earning a spot on the growing bucket lists of golf destination seekers across America means, in all likelihood, building more golf and more golfer-geared lodging.
That fact is not lost on Mayo or the course’s management. New accommodations are in the works, and behind the scenes, there are ongoing discussions about adding more golf. Any announcements to that end are for the future, but suffice to say the resort is aware of what it would take to compete. “It won’t be good golf,” Mayo says. “It’s got to be great golf.”
Of course, for the top 100 chasers among us, Rams Hill may already be in the crosshairs regardless of geographic constraints. It’s ranked No. 93 on GOLF’s list of the best public courses in the U.S., No. 73 on the same list by Golfweek, and, until a dozen newcomers muscled a few off Golf Digest’s recently updated list, sat No. 91 there, as well. It’s a bit remote, sure, but conceivably, a group could fly into San Diego, hit composite No. 35 Torrey Pines South, drive the two hours to Borrego Springs for Rams Hill, then head north an hour and a half to Palm Springs, where the No. 68-ranked PGA West Stadium Course awaits. Sprinkle in a few nights at hotels or near-course lodging. Depart Palm Springs International with three more notches on your embroidered golf belt without tithing more than a day or two of PTO.
For those considering such a journey, we hopped on a call with Mayo to get a feel for what awaits in Borrego Springs, get the rundown on recent construction, and hear about Rams Hill’s plans for the future.
Trip Notes: Rams Hill
Location: Borrego Springs, CA
Architect: Tom Fazio
History: Originally built as a 27-hole layout in 1983, Rams Hill got a new 18-hole routing by Tom Fazio in the late aughts, officially reopening in 2014.
Daily greens fees (as of publish date): $220 weekends, $165 weekdays; $90 during the offseason (June 9 – August 31)
Stay-and-play greens fees: $165 weekends, $130 weekdays, including free replays; $75 during the offseason
Bonus: Free golf on your birthday.
GTG: You have these massive, high-population areas right around you—San Diego, LA, Palm Springs. How much are you catering to day trips versus looking to really create a larger buddy golf trip experience?
Wil Mayo: When I started at Rams Hill almost six years ago, what we had were a lot of guys driving in from LA, San Diego, Orange County, and spending the day with us.
It’s great to get people out to experience it, but it’s a pre-dawn wake-up, and it’s breakfast at Starbucks, coffee on the way. And then they get there, to Rams Hill, and they’re not drinking because they know they have to drive home in a while, they get done maybe at 2:00, and they don’t have time for lunch because they want to hit the road. They don’t spend as much time hanging out in the golf shop, and they certainly don’t go play an emergency nine.
It just became really, really evident that we wanted to extend people’s stays. So, a core category for us is the stay-and-play golfer. Borrego Springs is a remote destination, with a really cool little town at the mouth of the Anza-Borrego State Park. We partner with two local resorts to offer stay and play, and we also have about 15 golf houses within the gates of Rams Hill. We try to drive as many people to stay-and-play as possible, because we think that’s the best way to experience Rams Hill.
GTG: Tell us a little bit about the course, the scenery, accommodations. What’s the appeal of booking a trip to Rams Hill?
WM: Southern California golf is so vast and so dynamic between Santa Barbara down to San Diego and out to the desert. It’s really a whole array of different golf that you’re going to see, but Rams Hill is pretty unique, the vistas that you get at Rams Hill being surrounded by the state park. It’s a really, really breathtaking place.
Before this gig, I worked for the Southern California Golf Association for about seven years, I ran tournaments for them. It was an awesome gig, and I spent a lot of nights on the road to almost every golf course in Southern California. And in my travels, I’ve never seen one like Rams Hill, I fell in love with it long before I worked here. It’s a stunning golf course by Tom Fazio. It’s just 18 really good golf holes. You can sit around and hear guys talking in the bar, maybe a group of eight, and maybe four different golf holes come up as potentially the best. It’s just a pure, fun golf experience.
GTG: You all finished some construction last year. What changed?
WM: We did a massive multi-year turf conversion, which served a number of purposes for us. Maybe first and foremost, it’s rooted in sustainability. For the first time ever this past fall, we didn’t overseed because we transitioned to a TifTuf Bermuda grass that, not to get too deep in the agronomy weeds, but it requires less water, keeps its color longer. It’s cool.
So that was really exciting for us. We used to have bentgrass greens, we converted those out two summers ago, and that was a big step one of the transition. And then step two was fairways, tees, rough, and everything else. So, pretty major construction. Maybe for Joe Golfer, it’s not super sexy to talk about turf conversion, but truly transformative for us, because it also allows us to stay open year-round.
GTG: When is peak season? When would you recommend trying to get it at its best?
WM: It just depends what you’re looking for out of your golf trip. I mean, for this particular turf, it’s going to thrive in the heat. So with us being open year-round, for guys who can wear it in the heat a little bit, or maybe even guys that we’ve priced out over the years as golf’s gotten more expensive. I mean, it gives us an opportunity to touch a different set of customer in the summer when the turf is really good, and the days are really long. You can go out there and loop it as many times as you want.
“It gives us an opportunity to touch a different set of customer in the summer when the turf is really good, and the days are really long.”
March-April is a really good time of the year weather-wise. October’s great—when other golf courses especially up in the Coachella Valley are closed for overseeding, we won’t be in October, and the desert is just about as good as it gets.
GTG: There is so much interest in golf travel, buddy trips right now, and also a ton of competition with resorts finding creative ways to compete and outdo one another. How do you view the state of golf travel at the moment and what’s it like to be a marketer in this space?
WM: It’s obviously my job and what I think about all day, every day, but I’m also a golf traveler myself. I’ve got a group of eight buddies, and we travel all over the country. We did Tetherow and Pronghorn (in Bend, Oregon), we went and did Pinehurst, we did Turning Stone up in New York. We’re going to do Northern Michigan this year.
So it’s fun to see it from both sides. It’s been fun to watch the budding destination golf sector really grow up. For our fans today, we’re 18 really good golf holes. And for the future as we continue to grow and build out, offering more golf, on-site accommodation, that’ll be when we’ll really enter the next weight class.